One or more charge storage elements (e.g., capacitors) that are charged to a backup voltage are commonly used to provide backup power to a load (e.g., solid state drive or disk drive) in case power is interrupted to the load. For example, in a solid state drive comprising a controller for controlling data operations to a non-volatile semiconductor memory (NVSM) array (i.e., reading data from or writing data to the NVSM array), one or more capacitors may be charged to a backup voltage (which can be greater than a supply voltage) to provide backup power to the solid state drive to ensure that user data is fully protected in an event of an interruption of power to the solid state drive.